


Salvage

by Somekindofcontraption



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Masturbation, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2020-12-14 22:07:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21022991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somekindofcontraption/pseuds/Somekindofcontraption
Summary: Salvage: Noun. To retrieve or preserve (something) from potential loss or adverse circumstances.There are two distinct points in their relationship; everything that came before Orpheus turned around, and everything that came after. A story about picking up pieces.





	1. The Long Road To Hell

_“Who are you to walk the road that no one’s ever walked before…”_

Strictly speaking, Orpheus wasn't the first to walk that long road to the underground. He wasn’t the first who used that ancient song to find his way in the dark, either. See, before the railroad track, before the telephone wires, before the mines and the oil and the wall created an uncrossable distance between Persephone and Hades, there was a path that was known only to those that belonged to the Underworld. 

It was a craggy thing, and winding, with lanterns hung on crooked posts to lead the way. The lantern light bounced like dull, yellow starlight off of endless geodes, precious rocks and metals studding the cavern walls, glittering like the night.

In the early days, when Persephone was young and Hades was not so old, the King of the Underworld would walk that road each year to bring her back from the mortal world. Every year he’d come, some small gift for her tucked against his breast, his arms outstretched, a small smile on his face just for her. Hades would hug her tight, and it was like coming home.

Truth be told, Hades _did_ ride a carriage in those days. Mortals recoiled in fear when they saw it, without quite knowing why. A big black chariot carted around by big black horses. But the road was bumpy and Persephone liked to walk, so instead of riding Hades walked. Sure as shit, love makes you do the craziest things. Full with happiness to bursting, Persephone’s bare feet trailed flowering vines on the cavern floor as they descended.

The walk didn’t seem so long when they were together, even if it were long when Hades was by himself, but half of the time they didn’t make it home before they were clawing at each other’s clothes like wild animals, rutting against the cavern walls or in a patch of grass and flowers she’d grow for them or any other functional surface they could find. A man and a woman wrapped up in each other so completely they didn’t care where they took their fill of each other.

But that was long ago.

—————

Persephone found herself toiling elbow deep in fertile soil, coaxing roots and flowers into being, thinking about that long walk that used to mark the end of Summer. It wasn’t necessary, the planting by hand, any more than her husband walking the whole way to her was necessary. But it was good work and she’d always enjoyed doing it herself before. Hadn’t done it in a while. Seemed as good a way as any to get back into the way of things. 

While she worked, Persephone thought about how she could always feel the early Fall harvest coming to fruit, the smell on the wind changing slow in anticipation of her leaving, and she would know then that her husband was making his way to her. The way it was supposed to be. The way it needed to be. The way it hadn’t been in an age or or more. 

It was the beginning of July, the mess with Orpheus and Eurydice just a few months behind her, the perfume of lingering summer storms and the sweet wet soil stuck up in her nose, beading sweat trickling down her forehead and stinging her eyes. Humidity made her green dress cling to her, moisture on her hips soaking the green fabric. 

Sticky, satisfying work.

By this time last year, Hades had come to get her. He was so early she could catch the sickly smell of fruit going to rot right on the trees, harvests dying in the fields as the train took her all the way down. Everything died at once and not a care in the world from the king of the underground. She could hear the people calling her, praying to her. All the drink in the world couldn't drown it out, but she sure did try her best to make it so.

Persephone had sat next to him in that train car last July, on the same seat as him but feeling miles away, swigging on occasion from her hip flask and looking out the window. Each time she took a swig she could practically hear him raise his eyebrow disapprovingly. The ride was silent right up until they hit underground, the tunnel. The silence grated on her too. 

Those sunglasses. Those sleek, expensive, stupid sunglasses shining at her even as the cabin went dark around them, reflecting the haze of electric lights as they whizzed by. Black as the railroad car they were riding in. Persephone felt anger rising in her, the weight of words unsaid. She hated them glasses and he _had to know _she hated them and he _still insisted on wearing them _even when it was dark out.

“It’s dark in here, Husband,” Persephone said. She was trying to act sweet on him, catch some flies with honey, but it just came out bitter and commanding. All growl, all bite. “Why don’t ya take those glasses off so I can see that face a’ yours.”

No response. Tapping her foot impatiently she took another swig of sunshine, and he made this judgmental noise at his newspaper and Persephone sure as shit wasn’t going to sit in that train car and let her _husband _put on his “King of the Underworld”_ bullshit_ airs when he took her away three whole months ahead of schedule without so much as asking her if it was okay.

“LOOK AT ME!” It came out more slur than speech, her voice cracking that tenuous silence like a tremor cracks the earth wide open and in one drunken, clumsy movement she’d reached across the no-man’s land of the bench between them and hurled the sunglasses into the nearest wall. Tinkle of glass, clatter of metal on metal. The pieces rained down on the plush carpet in front of them.

Persephone braced herself for the ensuing fight. Hades leaned forward, hanging his head down toward his shoes, rubbing his temples. Always played it straight, her husband, always collected unless things got _really _messy. Hard to get a fight out of him, but she was especially good at it. 

“You could at least pretend you’re happy to see me,” he grumbled, looking down at his old, wide hands.  Persephone gave him a long look as she uncorked her flask and emptied it. His face was set somewhere between anguish and disgust. It made her feel bold, a grin finding its way to her face and she made a point of smacking her lips at him, too, and wasn’t that just peachy the way it made his jaw twitch.

“You could at least pretend you’re happy to see me,” he repeated, his voice little more than a quiet growl. She wanted him to shout but here he was, all careful control, all business, making it all about him. 

“Ain’t about that,” she snapped

“You’re my wife.” As if that explained everything.

“Your wife who got a job to do. You didn’t even ask, Hades. You never ask, never apologize, never stop to spare a thought for me or anyone else, you just—” her voice came out a sob, cracking. She choked off the rest of the sentence, swallowed it up. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” 

Persephone looked at her husband. Hades looked at the floor. The train shuddered to a stop, and he shot up like a rocket. A slight pause in the doorway before he left, and words just barely a whisper—

“I missed ya.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A labor of love - any mistakes are mine, it has not been beta read. I've written over 15k words for this story, and I'm nowhere near done! I thought I'd post the first chapter to test the waters a bit. Rating is for later chapters.
> 
> This one is for the world we dream about, in spite of the one we live in. I'm still here.


	2. Dry Summer

While May and June were okay, and July was productive, April was spent largely in bed paying for old sins.

The tremors were constant, tearing through her body as it tried its damnedest to overcome her centuries of overindulgence. She shivered and shook, vomited everything she tried to eat, and cried more than she had in the whole of her very long life. On nights where she was at her lowest and she felt like she couldn’t sick up any more, nights when her stomach was just about concave from all the retching, she asked her mother to die.

Demeter ignored her daughter’s request gracefully, never giving it the dignity of mentioning it when the night was over. As if killing a goddess or a daughter were an easy thing anyway. She kept Persephone wrapped in blankets like a child, pressing a cold cloth on her clammy forehead, cradling her body through the night, every night. 

All the bottles in the house, gone, cleaned out. No trips to the bar to drink with mortals, no dandelion wine in the fields. Just her and her mother, working through the start of Spring, getting shit done. It was the closest they’d been since she was a much younger girl, and Persephone was grateful for her.  Wouldn’t have made it without her, in fact, and for the first time in a long time she apologized to her mother and meant it. For everything before, and for asking to die, too, because she wasn’t so blind with suffering she couldn’t see the look on Demeter’s face when she’d said it.

“I’m sorry, mama. I’m sorry for everything. So, so sorry,” Persephone choked through her tears, throat rough from passing bile. 

“I’m proud of you, daughter,” Demeter whispered into her daughter’s curls, clutching her tight to her breast, curled around her like a shell. “So proud.” 

There was nothing to be proud of, just a mess of her own doing to fix. She’d made this bed years ago, and now she was finally lying in it. It made for a weak start to spring, but it was necessary if she was going to do things right. There was a lot to think on before Hades came to take her down below again, and she couldn’t do it without a clear head.

The thinking didn’t make her feel any good, but maybe it was okay to sit with that for a while. Sit with her thoughts. So she did; Persephone sat thinking hard on that feeling in her gut until just like that July came and went. By some miracle or something else there was no train that month, no husband, no word from below, no early fall. 

Being dry was still a struggle, but she’d stopped having the shakes and was able to get stuck into the work of spring. Able to eat, too, and clear as a bell by the beginning of July when she got to thinking of the old day and her husband and all the wrong they'd done. Every day she looked long and hard into the faces of the mortals around her. Danced with them, helped them sow their seeds. Tried to remember how important it was that she did right by them.

They looked good, so much more vibrant than they had in a while. But in the back of her mind was that awful, creeping feeling that any minute now that bliss would go, her hard work would be wasted and they’d starve all the same because her husband didn't know how to be without her anymore.  
  
Imagine her surprise when July passed her by, and then August came and went too without so much as a peep from down below.

—————

September crept up on Persephone, and she was surprised to find that first time in a long time she was missing her husband, really missing him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even really saw a September, and soon she started wishing for that lonely train whistle to put her mind at ease. She kept her suitcase half packed in her room, and every day she expected to hear Hermes calling from the station. They needed a long Spring, and she felt guilty for thinking he'd cut it off short at the end, but it didn't stop her from missing him.

In the evenings she sat with Demeter, drinking juice, eating honeyed fruit and enjoying the quiet breeze rustling through the trees. Nobody could say she wasn’t trying, but in the quiet of the evening time ugly thoughts were starting to seep in and no amount of trying could bury _that_. No word from the underworld, no train on the tracks, nothing but time and quiet for the worry to grow in her.

The mortal world started to feel lonely and big, too big. Persephone couldn’t help but think on her husband, on his absence, with nothing else to fill her head of a nighttime. Somewhere along the way the dread at hearing that train roll down the tracks had turned to a dread that it might not come at all. 

Already September, and wasn’t that something, wasn’t that a treat? It was just her mother and the mortals and summer and her own goddamn thoughts bearing down on her and god _damn _it all if she didn’t want a good long drink to ease away the hurt. God damn it, if she didn’t want a way to drown the host of poisonous thoughts seeping into her brain when they day was done.

Where was Hades?

Had he lied, when he said he’d try again? Had he given up on his old girl at last, abandoning her to the mortal world for greener gardens? Was he so busy with work that he’d forgotten her? All these long years of marriage, never been late. Was he… was he shacking up with that poor songbird _child_, that innocent slip of a girl who never wanted him to begin with, making a fool of his trusting wife above ground getting herself homesick over nothing?

As soon as Persephone thought it she wished she could un-think it.

The idea took hold, poking roots into the fertile soil of her sober head, deep roots she couldn’t rip out. Anger gone to seed inside her at the thought that her husband, _her _husband, might have finally left her behind, after all they’d been through. The thought that he’d take another woman to their bed, again, _again._  
  
Just over six months ago Persephone watched a monster that looked like her husband seduce a young mortal to her death and to his bed. Riots to quell? Walls to build? Her husband, _her _husband, speaking some mighty pretty words to lovely little Eurydice, who flitted like a bird just out of his reach, nervous as a sparrow and starving to death.

Anyone with eyes could see the girl didn’t give a flying fuck about Hades or his dead city. Hades crooned through his teeth, all oil slick smooth, luring her in with that charming, deadly underworld smile…. cat and canary. So young. Was he trying to impress this young thing, then? Was he out there somewhere, still trying to impress her now?

Persephone remembered how it felt looking on, desperately trying to claw her way out of her own head, away from what she was seeing. The old man’s act wasn’t working, he _had_ to know that it wasn’t working. Eurydice was desperate, she wanted food and a bed, and she didn’t care whose bed it was or what she had to do to get at it as long as it was safe there. She didn't want Persephone's old husband or his big calloused hands. As long as she could float away.

Hades’ hair had been unusually unkempt, sticking up on one side. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, couldn’t see his face beyond the face he was putting on. What had they become? What had _he _become? Seducing this _child._ Just to get at her, and it was _working, _because she was livid.  Bile bubbled up in her throat, sick and burning, and she wanted to throttle him and she knew she should stop him— 

“Anybody want a drink?” Persephone heard herself say.

Hades’ hand settled heavy on the girl’s shoulder. Her stomach dropped, trembling, and she thought she might sick up after all. It was intimate in a way that he wasn’t, not ever, not with anyone but her. Loosened tie, unbuttoned waist coat, a queer smile she didn't like his face settled into. When he ushered the girl into his office that day, his hand ghosted over the small of her back and Persephone turned tail for the speakeasy like the coward she was.

_—————_

Persphone tried to let it go, tried to trust that her man was just doing as she asked. Tried not to think about the worst kind of hurt her husband was capable of inflicting on her. Tried to hope that he wouldn't do that to her, not again, not after everything. September was almost over, and Persephone was giving up hope, so she took out a pen and paper with every intention of sending something, anything, to let Hades know she was waiting.

Took her back, looking at that blank sheet of paper. All the possibility in the world, all she had to do was put her thoughts to words. When they first were wed, for the first thousand years, even, Hades and Persephone would exchange letters all summer. Hades would even come to visit, when he could get away, back when he’d get away from work for her sake. 

The underworld wasn’t what it is now. The river styx still cut with jagged purpose through the landscape, Hadestown little more than a collection of shacks designed to bring familiarity and comfort to newly-dead mortal minds. No bricks, no walls, no razor wire. Just a place for souls to go when their time above was done.

The letters between them were frequent and long, full of their memories, musings, ranging the full gamut from mundane to important to filthy. What did they share now besides a mutual past and an uncertain future? What was there to be said that hadn’t been said already, that wouldn’t come out wrong, that wouldn’t— 

A pile of crumpled letters later and a good, strong desire to drink, Persephone overturned her desk in a rage and went into the fields to get her hands dirty. So long down this dark road of theirs, she didn’t have a damn clue what to say to the man she loved anymore, didn’t know how to tell him she missed him without weighing every option, every weak point her words might reveal in her.

While the mortals celebrated the longest Spring in centuries, she was being crushed under the weight of her own doubt. Couldn't even find it in her to just be happy that they were thriving.

By the first day of October she found herself really and truly staring into the yawning chasm of eternity, into the possibility that she'd spend the rest of her life above ground in endless Springtime without her husband. The feeling threatened to swallow her each day and so she toiled harder and harder in the fields, running herself ragged to stave off the creeping feeling of despair.

On the second day of October, she had a visitor.  
  
The boy didn’t approach her, didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, even. She wasn’t even sure why she looked up, if it was just some feeling that made her look off into those trees, but she saw him standing there leaning on a birch with a lyre over his shoulder, looking on at her working in the field, and it made her heart stutter in her old chest.

Persephone paused, wiped her brow, and beckoned him over. 

“Hello, Orpheus.” The voice that came out of her was soft, so soft. She didn’t recognize herself, this person she was trying to get back to being.

“Hey, Persephone.” 

There was nothing Persephone could say. The boy hadn’t made it, and he was alone, and now she was alone too. He was surprised to see her there above ground, and it showed behind those intense, staring eyes. She was a reminder of what he could have had if he’d only done the right thing. Orpheus was grateful to see her, but a little sad too.

Persephone felt that happy-sad in her gut, just about too big to fit inside her, too big to put to words, too big to drink away even if she gave in to the urge and so all she could do was wrap Orpheus in her arms and try to hold it in. He cried on her shoulder, and if he noticed her crying too he did her a kindness in not mentioning it. 

That evening they sat on the porch looking over her mother’s gardens, alone in a companionable quiet. Demeter made herself scarce, probably hoping he was some suitor or something since she still bore no particular good will towards Hades and wouldn’t be sad to see him gone. 

The plate of fruit in front of them remained largely untouched, but Orpheus sipped slow and purposeful-like at the goblet of juice she had handed to him. After what seemed like hours of grave quiet, he spoke, more into his goblet than to her.

“I turned back.”

Persephone blew out an unsteady breath. The boy needed to give a name to what was eating him up inside, and Persephone had to bear it, _deserved_ to bear it, with him. It was all that was left in her to do, so she had to do it. All the long, fruitful springs in the world wouldn’t fix this particular injustice, and she was mighty ashamed for it. 

“I know. Boy, don’t I know.” 

“I should have trusted her, I should have —“ 

“The game was fixed. No helping it. But, for what it’s worth…” Persephone swallowed audibly. “For what it’s worth, we hoped…. we hoped you’d make it.”

“We?” he whispered. The boy’s stare was intense. More intense by candlelight.

Persephone looked at her hands. “We.” 

“He—“

“Yes.” Her answer was firm, sure. “Yes. Even him.” 

“Then why did he…?”

“You’re too much like him, like he used to be, he could see it in ya.” With a heavy sigh, Persephone smoothed out nonexistent wrinkles in her skirt, It had to be bore, this tragedy between them. No helping it. “You broke his rules, and he couldn’t make it easy for you even if he wanted to, not with the Fates whisperin’ in his ear and his pride and ego on the line. You know how those fates are. It doesn’t fix anything, doesn’t make it better, but I thought you should know.” 

His goblet clinked heavy on the small glass table. Orpheus looked at her now, staring right into her.For all his youth, he knew several lifetime worth of lessons about love now, about the cruelty in this world, and she was laid bare by the knowing in those pretty eyes. All the understanding. 

“You’re still here,” he said cautiously, as if saying the thing might threaten it being true.

Persephone looked up. Her hurt a palpable force, wilting her resolve like a flower. They understood each other now, the Queen of the Underworld and this boy. She took his hand like a mother, a caretaker, a friend, and a kindred spirit all wrapped up in one. His tears reflected her own. “Yeah,” She croaked. “I’m still here.”

Orpheus nodded. This boy saw a lot, these days, and maybe he could see what she was thinking, or maybe he was telling himself that things were going to finally go right this year, that his efforts weren’t for nothing. Either way he squeezed her hand, nodding sagely back at her. “He’ll be back.”

A long time passed with Persephone and Orpheus hand in hand. It felt good, having something or someone to hold on to, even for a little while. He left first thing the next day without so much as asking after Eurydice. Nothing to be said, nothing to change, nothing to be helped. 

Orpheus must’ve known that Persephone would ensure Eurydice was cared for as well as she could be. She took care of him, too, sending him off with a bundle of fruit and juice and nuts and bread. Before he left she hugged him tightly, took his face in her hands.

“Never let go of all that love.” She kissed his forehead. “Never change.”

I’m glad you’re here. We need you ” He smiled at her, shy-like and teary eyed, and said softly, “He’ll come.”

Warmth cradled her heart as she watched him disappear back into the forest. So much unsaid, but no matter. Everything he’d needed to say was in the silence shared between them. Keep on walking, keep on moving forward, push for the end. No matter how much it hurt, no matter what happened, she had a job to do, a mantra to keep her going.

She was needed here. 

She was needed here. 

She was needed here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the kudos, I appreciate your time and comments, too! :]  
Next chapter is Hades' POV - please be mindful of the rating on this one, it's there for reasons.


	3. Lend Them An Ear

“You asked for me?”

It was the beginning of July and Hades had a plan. He looked up at Eurydice, standing in the doorway of his office looking every bit like someone expecting a ledge would give way from under them. Looking every bit like someone expecting to be swallowed whole. Nothing but a bright canary in a coal mine, sniffing that hateful first whiff of gas. Fates, but this was a bad idea. 

“S-sir?

A bad idea, a very bad idea. But it needed to be tried. Nothing left to do but face his own failings. He looked at her for a long time through those dark glasses before finally beckoning her inside of his office for the first time since she’d signed her papers.

“Take a seat.” 

The girl sat on the edge of her seat rather than back in it. Always ready to run from trouble. She’d been looking after that speakeasy in Persephone’s absence. A risky endeavor for anyone more expendable than the queen. She was surely thinking on that now. 

“I’ve called you here because…” Hades paused to remove his sunglasses, folding them and setting them carefully on top of his stack of paperwork. Didn’t have a mirror in his office, but he was sure his eyes looked tired, red-rimmed and puffy. Only, his wife hated talking to him with the glasses on, and he was thinking on the things she said a little harder than usual. He cleared his throat. “You’re here because I would like your… input. On something”

Eurydice went slack jaw, like a dead bass. 

“The underworld is about to undergo a restructure, of sorts. I need… input, on how it should be done.”

“Are you,” Her voice came out as a squeak. She was trembling. “Are you asking me for advice?” 

“I’m asking for your _opinion,_” Hades growled, a twitching grimace stuck on that mouth of his, like he’d swallowed something unsavory. “I will take it into consideration. I make no guarantees, but I want to know; what do you _want?” _

Eurydice was still looking at him wide-eyed, mouth open, eyebrows disappearing up into her bangs. She spoke slowly. “I don’t… understand.”

Hades let out a discontented noise, a heavy sound in the back of his throat that startled the girl. Eurydice slipped off the edge of the seat, catching herself on his desk. “This is not a trick, song bird. I’m asking what will make my _children,” _a word, spat out like poisoned wine, “happy. I am asking _you _specifically because my _wife _seems to like you. I am not a patient man, I’d appreciate your expedience and your brevity.” 

The girl looked at him with those big, thoughtful eyes as she scooted back onto her seat. She was clever, for a mortal, and he didn’t much like that cleverness directed at him. Whatever conclusion she came to, it steeled her resolve. The voice she found was calm and clear, smooth as a still lake. 

“Sir, are you askin’ what will make us happy? Or what will make _her _happy?”

The pause between them was heavy, prickling with static. The distant sound of workers, the steady beat of machinery, the music of industry faded out and that ugly mess of feelings he was holding onto tightened his lungs, chewed him up, urged him to punish her, _punish her_, for being so bold. This is what happens, this is what you get. Lend them an ear and they’ll— 

But then Hades thought of his wife. _His wife_. His miserable wife who couldn’t spend her time with him without some sort of substance to take the edge off of his company. His wife who, for all they hurt each other over the years, still seemed to love him. His wife who asked him to wait for her even though she believed the worst of him.

Persephone who hated their home but seemed to love this girl she hardly knew, and this girl’s insolent lover too. Hades clamped his jaw like a vice, tamped down on the biting words he defaulted to, and held in all that curled up hate inside. One deep breath, two, three. He looked long and hard at the girl who after everything that had happened still had the courage to call out a king. Who had nothing left to lose.

“One will surely lead to the other, song bird. S’why I’m askin’.” 

The meeting lasted well into the night. The girl talked, the King listened, and by the end of it they had a plan, a modified contract, and a handshake to bind the tentative and unlikely partnership.

—————

It was the beginning of July and Hades had a plan. But that plan didn’t warm his skin at night, didn’t bring warmth or light to their home, their realm, their bed. Persephone’s absence was keenly felt, and in the early hours of the morning he loosened his tie and thought of his wife. Sitting behind his desk in his big, empty office, listening to the sound of distance pickaxes, metal on metal, gears churning with several months between him and his lover, he was feeling her absence keenly.

This time last year he had come for his wife out of spite just as much as out of missing her. Word from Hermes was that it was a particularly fruitful Spring from the get-go, his wife dancing every night away with mortals, drinking wine and celebrating while he sat below, alone, missing her. Doubtful that she even spared a though for him, for all she never wrote him any more. 

Rage had built up inside of him for all of June, the Fates whispering hateful thoughts into his head, water on a grease fire. He imagined her skin gone golden in the sunlight, mortals daring to pepper that skin with easy touches, who laughed with her like it was nothing. He built up the image inside of his head of what he was missing out on until he couldn’t take it anymore, and he boarded his train to take his lover home.

The very worst of him. It seemed like he only showed her the very worst of himself these days. So many years together, Hadestown driving a wedge between them as he tried and tried to give her what she wanted, what she needed. His city grew and so did the resentment, the hate between them. Nothing made her happy, nothing ever made her smile the way she did up above. Not anymore.

Hubris. All of it, hubris. 

All those years and somehow Hades didn’t know how to talk to his wife. She didn’t know how to talk to him either. Quite the pair, the two of them. When was the last time they had kissed - really kissed? Not just the soft press of lips on his cheek when she was leaving, but a true, honest-to-gods passionate kiss on the mouth. A kiss to say I miss you, or I love you, or hello, or just because. 

When was the last time they had made love?

Not fucking. Not the kind of mindless rutting that they could always muster, even when they were pissed as all hell at each other. Hades remembered when they last partook of _that_ particular activity distinctly. Remembered his beautiful wife bent over the same mahogany desk he was sitting in front of now. Dark dress rucked up over her hips. Lace panties crushed under his feet somewhere. Long curls wrapped up in net and clever fingers splayed over his ledgers and contracts, and they were making a mess but he sure as hell wasn’t complaining at the time, buried to the hilt in the blazing sunshine-hot-wet heat of his lover.

They hadn’t been intimate like that since the year before, hadn’t so much as touched one another except hand in calloused hand since she’d been back underground this time, hadn’t shared a bed since… it didn’t matter. Hades _wanted_, and he was _having_, and he couldn't bother questioning it so he leaned down to plant a kiss on the sweat-damp nape of her neck as he thrust into her in short, punishing strokes.

Persephone made small, desperate mewling sounds and Hades changed his angle ever so slightly. Leaning forward to reach his hand between her slick thighs. She was close, and so was he, and everything was rough around the edges, angry under the surface, biting. But she had come to him and he was drunk off of her, off of the closeness of her, and he didn’t want it to end but it surely had to sometime.

In a fit Hades decided he didn’t want it this way, didn’t want to finish without his wife, _his_ beautiful wife, staring up and him with that expressive face he loved so dearly. Hades wanted to look into her eyes when he came, to make her come and see her eyes when she did. Stroking one hand down her side Hades withdrew, cock wet with her, and murmured, “Wanna see ya, lover. Wanna see your face.”

Persephone grumbled something in protest and clumsily turned underneath him, their knees knocked together and when he saw her face he felt choked, gagging as if on oil and it was sticking in his throat, heavy in his stomach. Persephone, half in the barrel and looking cranky as hell, did not look euphoric or anything else he’d expect her to look when they were making love.

Bitter. Uninterested. Annoyed, even.

Hades reached forward to brush his thumb against her lower lip and his wife, his _wife_, held perfectly still as if confronting a coiling rattlesnake rather than being intimate with her husband. Her big brown eyes fixed on a spot somewhere over his left shoulder, unfocused, the way he did when he didn’t want to engage with her anger. So alike, the two of them. What a pair. He swallowed audibly.

“Lover… what is it?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. You’re the one making it something.” 

Persephone smelled like flowers, but only underneath the heavy stench of his very expensive whiskey. She was looking at him now with unfocused eyes, a predatory stare, only now that she realized he was losing interest. Hades groaned, dropping his hand. Persephone grabbed at him, trying to move his hands back to her hips in a clumsy attempt to continue where they’d left off. He searched her eyes, looking for something, anything to make him want to keep going. 

Hades couldn’t do it. When it became clear he didn’t intend to touch her again, anger crept into that face of hers, all spitfire and hate and resentment on that sun-kissed visage, a raging shadow of the woman he’d married all those years ago.

“Don’t look at me like that, Hades. I’m here to,” hiccup. “I’m here to fuck, not for your fucking feelings, so let’s just _do it _already.”

Hades couldn’t breathe, his mouth opened and closed, with too many words bidding to come out but getting stuck, clogged up just behind his teeth. He needed to get away, anywhere, out. He cursed himself for doing this in his office and not in their bed, or not at all. Cursed himself for falling into the trap of something that wasn't there.

Persephone had come to him, and he couldn’t say no, and now here they were. Meanness in her voice, her eyes, and he’d be mean right back, and they’d fight. Sometime later they’d have angry sex; not make up sex, because they never made up any more, just burned up energy until they were too tired to be mad anymore. They’d have angry sex, exchange familiar hurtful jabs, and that would be that for a while yet until the thought possessed them to try to get close again.

But in that moment Hades was too disappointed to fight, too hurt to dance this particular dance. He kissed Persephone’s cheek and tucked his softened, sticky cock back into his underwear, disappointment embodied in the sound of his trousers zipping. Without a word he left his office and headed to the factory floor with Persephone shouting obscenities at his retreating back.

When Hades returned to his office in the early hours of that morning his paperwork, which had already been scattered when he bent Persephone over the desk, was all over the floor. His desk, despite being a heavy behemoth of a thing, was tipped on its side, one of the drawers smashed on the floor. One of the windows was broken; she’d thrown a ledger through it. A glass decanter was smashed against a wall; she’d obviously drank its contents before tossing it at the bricks.

Bad, bad, bad. 

Hades took his sunglasses off and set them on the mantle, rubbing his forehead. He was exhausted. He expected Persephone would be in that speakeasy of hers by now, drinking the rest of the night away, dancing with shades, dealing in nostalgia and exposing cracks in the wall he built for her. Laughing for everyone but him. 

Jealousy bubbled in him, but rather than entertain it or wallow in self-pity, he resigned himself to head to bed. Alone.

Hades wasn’t often surprised in those days, not when it came to his wife, unless it was the new and exciting ways they found to hurt one another. But when he found his wife sleeping the spare bed off his office where he spent most of his nights (assuming he slept at all,) he was surely surprised to see her. Taking up all of the space in his solitary exile bedroom, nude, sprawled over the spartan cotton sheets, lights from Hadestown dancing over her golden skin… beautiful. Always so beautiful. He watched her for a while, standing in the doorway, afraid to disturb the quiet.  If an errant tear or two slipped down his cheeks, he refused to dwell on or acknowledge it. Running his hand through his hair, mussing it all up on one side, he approached the bed and laid down beside his wife, his _beautiful _wife, wrapping her in his arms. She was so far gone she didn’t wake, and instead snuggled into his embrace with a drunken murmur. 

Hades didn’t sleep that night. Just lying there, enjoying the feel of his wife in his arms. It had been so long since they were anything resembling quiet.

—————

Hades surprised himself with his own resolve. 

Keeping busy, he put everything he had into reforming Hadestown. July passed him by and he worked through the itch, the dry mouth desire to hop a train above ground. He worked almost around the clock, doing his best to edge out the thoughts of Persephone, the longing. He didn’t ask Hermes for a status report, didn’t write her. He tried his best not to resent her, too, and that was the hardest part, while she undoubtedly danced her days away without him.

If the rasping fiddle and harpy cooing of the Fates tried to catch his ears, he ignored it the best he could. For now, he ignored it.

The month was long, and short too. Before he knew it August had left them. By that point Persephone’s speakeasy was an official place of employment, on the books of Hadestown, with a sign and everything. Eurydice had made it out of scrap metal, rustic and earthy and rough around the edges. _Persephone’s. _With its namesake gone to the mortal realm, the hole-in-the-wall place didn’t deal much in that old steady supply of nostalgia, but with any luck when the lady came back it wouldn’t have to work too hard to make its patrons happy. In the meantime it was scrubbed up like fancy dress shoes and in the capable care of Eurydice.

At the start of September, Hadestown went dark for the first time since the neon was first set alight. A new day-night cycle, Hades' best idea. Come up with that one without any help, and the shades worked short shifts, and Eurydice wasn't sure this was the same man that trapped her here to begin with. Shades did their busy work all day, and at night the town went quiet. Houses, real looking ones, and a town square with an (albeit barren) garden had cropped up, too — that was Eurydice, through and through, but Hades gave her the ay-okay and shifted some reality to make way for the improvements.

The quiet made things worse, for Hades. While the shades slept he worked on and on, driving himself straight into the ground, planning and crunching numbers and scheming through the quiet and the dark. It was time to get her, he knew, but he wasn’t ready, wasn’t finished, and the mortals needed a long spring anyway. Just about killed himself working just to stop himself from making those same old old mistakes.

Staring down the middle of September he didn’t write her. He thought about it, but wanted her to know he was trying. Nobody could say he wasn’t trying. She didn’t write him either, and wasn’t that just the way of things, but maybe things would be okay. Maybe she wouldn’t forget about her old husband down below. Hermes started coming in every other day by that point, a questioning look on his face. 

Each time, Hades would simply say, “Not yet.”

“Maybe it’s not my place, boss, but I’m gonna say it anyway.” Hades looked up from his papers. It had been many years since Hermes had talked to him about anything besides reports. He was not the most approachable man, which was rather the point. “You should write your wife, Mr. Hades. Tell her your comin’ is a ‘not yet’ and not a ‘not ever.’ I’ll take the message myself. I get that you’re tryin’ somethin’ new here, but I’d hate to see it all fall out from under ya because you failed to communicate your intentions ahead a’ time.”

Hades looked at Hermes standing in the doorway. He was struck in that moment by how unfair he’d been to old friend. A fellow god, all those years of asking after reports but never after him, never a discussion that wasn’t business… Nothing but a tool for a long while, where there used to be companionable report. Here was always there, always reporting back to him on his wife, carrying letters to and fro… to Hermes’ credit, he didn’t even squirm in the silence while Hades considered how things had got this way, because he’d been around Hades too long to be scared of a little intense quiet.

“Thank you, Mr. Hermes. I’ll… think on it.” Hades cleared his throat. “It’s not time yet, though. I’ll leave her be. For now.” 

Hermes put a hand on his hip, mouth cocked in a lopsided frown, eyebrow raised as he considered this unusual interaction. After a few beats, Hermes simply gave a long, drawn out, “Aiiight.” 

Hades was alone.


	4. Interlude: Canary in a Coal Mine

Hermes was not the only one looking on at the state of things with concern in his heart. Late one night when October was but days away and there was still no sign of that sweet summer lady to brighten the place, Eurydice gathered up what courage she could muster and rapped on the closed door of Hades office.

She hadn’t seen him more than a handful of times, a handful of minutes, in the last few months. Not since their negotiation. He only ever stopped by to ask after some changes, or to get her to fix something up for him.  There was no foreman in sight, just Eurydice serving as liaison between the other workers, the other shades, and the King. A negotiator of sorts. Whatever he’d done to her contract in the fine print, it made her feel a little more like herself each day, and she was glad for it. 

Not grateful, because it was the least Hades could do for her, but glad all the same.

Now, though. Now she was starting to worry. This project, whatever it was he was trying to do, had just as much potential to eat up the time he should be spending with his wife as anything else he did. Replacing the wall with something else wasn’t going to fix this mess. She needed to be sure that he wasn’t forgetting why he was doing all this, that he wasn’t forgetting the lady he was meant to be pleasing.

A long spring was just fine up above, but nature needed balance, needed order. Six months above, six below. Fates only knew what new and dreadful things could be borne of all that overlong and sticky heat if Persephone didn’t come home soon. With no invitation to enter forthcoming, Eurydice took a deep breath and cracked open the door. 

The sight she was met with sure was something. Hades, King of the Underworld, with his sleeves rolled up and his tie undone and his hair all stuck up on one side, fast asleep and practically drooling on that monstrosity of an office desk. Ledgers crumpled up under his bent forehead, a scotch left unfinished at his elbow.

Eurydice almost laughed; almost. He looked ridiculous, but she didn’t want to push her luck with him so she stifled the laugh, approaching the desk at a slow creep. Steady breathing, and she remembered that he was a man as well as a God and he looked just about pushed to his limits. 

Eurydice cleared her throat. Nothing. So she leaned forward and tapped his shoulder, breath caught full in her lungs, bracing herself. Hades startled awake, his elbow hitting the scotch glass which skittered several inches across the slick, shiny surface of his desk. He looked at her wide-eyed and muddled, not quite awake, before rubbing his eyes with those mile-wide calloused palms. 

“What are you doin’ here, girl?” 

Maybe Eurydice had been going about this all wrong. Walking on eggshells around this God who was also a man. This man-god with sleep in his eyes who surely needed a bath and a shave and a good night’s rest. This god-man with the crumpled tie and a splotch of ink smudged on his cheek. Maybe he wouldn’t thank her for what she was gonna do, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need it. 

“Here to talk some sense into that big dumb head a’ yours,” Eurydice said, willing herself stern when she was, in all honesty, quaking in her dirty boots. “You’ve come too far to screw up now, I won’t let you.”

There was a moment where that old viciousness sparked behind those grey eyes, but it was gone just as quickly as it came. Lucky for her he seemed too tired to condemn her to the line, or Tartarus, or wherever the hell else he might have sent her if she’d talked to him like that before. 

“You’ve got quite the nerve, song bird. Comin’ here to scold the King of Hell.”

“Well, someone oughta scold you, else you’ll just make a mess of things, _again._,” She huffed back, testy, voice sharp as tacks. “Go get some sleep, King a’ Hell. Get some sleep, clean yourself up, and go get that damn wife a’ yours before all your hard work goes to waste.”

Hades’ lip twitched. “I’ll get her when I’m good and goddamn _ready _to get her, _song bird_. Get outta here.” 

“You’ll get her soon or not at all, _your majesty._ You can’t replace one project with another like that’s gonna fix anything. So I’ll say it again — take some rest, clean yourself up real nice, wear something that your wife will like, and go and get her before she thinks you left her up there for good. The project doesn’t have to be finished for her to see you’ve been trying, but she does have to _see _it to know, and you’re gonna blow this shot if you don’t do something soon.”

Hades reached for that glass of sunshine on his desk, looking down to consider the inside of the glass with an unintelligible grumble. 

“Sorry, didn’t catch that.” 

“Weren’t meant to.”

“Don’t be a child.”

“I said,” He growled, slamming down the scotch glass a little harder than he might have meant to. “Why did I ever think to need a canary in this coal mine? Let me be, song bird. Can’t think with you flapping and flitting around this office, squawking at me. I’ll go when I’m good and ready.” 

“Lost your metaphor. Canaries don’t squawk. It seems to me that you’re stuck with me now so it’s no use wishing otherwise.” Eurydice was on a roll now, she almost couldn’t help herself. She perched up on that extra chair she’d quaked in once while she’d signed her life away, feet on the seat and ass on the top of the chair back so she could look down on the king of hell like a schoolmaster chiding an overly rambunctious child. “You’ve got no right to complain, seeing as you made this mess. You’ve made your bed with me, and now you’re gonna lie in it, so I won't hear another word about gettin' out of here until you listen to what I have to say.”

Hades grumbled, and there was shame in it. “Didn’t make any bed to lie in with you, and you know it.”

“You could have; sure as shit, you wanted your wife to think you did. That was the point of that show you put on, wasn’t it? Never asked for a part in this play, but I’m for a pound now and I’m here to tell you that if I were your wife and I thought you’d been unfaithful, I wouldn’t be so charitable-like about you being late. Not if I thought the girl you’d taken into the marriage bed was down here with you, not knowing that you’ve never had cause to be late before now. She won't ever blame me, Hades, for what she thinks you did. You'll bear that punishment all on your lonesome, and possibly forever.”

Eurydice could pinpoint the exact moment her reason broke sharp into that stubborn head of his. Hades’ eyebrows drew up, forehead wrinkling as he stared unblinking at some point over her left shoulder. Cogs working behind those eyes, and weren’t they storm-filled like he was the god of thunder and not the god of death. Man of few words, this one was, so when the realization took him he hadn’t much to say.

“Ah, shit.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to get this interlude out there, because it's so important to me and my understanding of Hades' character, and how I reconcile what he did to Eurydice, and how he'd reconcile it too. There will be more on the subject later, but I'm glad to share this bit with you now! I really enjoyed writing it. Thank you all for your kind comments.


	5. Fall Harvest

In a September that was not so long ago in the grand scheme of things, Persephone had ridden the train to Hadestown for the first time. It was a shiny new thing with sleek black sides and a booming state-of the-art engine, loud and smoky.. The whistle of that train didn’t mean much, yet. It was just a sound, a novelty.

“Lover, _please.”_

Persephone remembered the way their breath fogged up the windows. Inside their private car were crushed velvet wall coverings, leather seats, and on that first trip two desperate lovers grasped and scrabbled to touch every inch of each other. Hades’ pet project from the last two summers finally in its maiden voyage. 

He was so proud of his newest acquisition, and so excited to share it with her. The doors had hardly closed behind them when Hades pounced on her, mouthing the pulse point of her neck, scraping his teeth over her collar bones. Before long he had her green summerdress pulled up and his silver haired head burrowed between her legs. The noise Persephone made was undignified; he made a sound deep in his throat that could have been a chuckle.

“_Mmmph, _Hades, I want - I want -"

  
Persephone didn’t much like leather, but she also didn’t much care _what_ it was that she was sat on while Hades clever mouth worked her over. He was torturing her, that sharp tongue tracing close to her clit, not quite hitting that spot that made her see stars, probably meant as payback for the buttons she’d pulled off his fancy with her impatience when they started getting grabby.

“Husband, I want to - hynghhh” 

Persephone’s request ended in a very undignified moan as Hades curled two fingers inside of her, stroking, and didn’t he just always know just what to do? Damn man knew her body better than she did, and she wriggled with equal parts pleasure and impatience until she was shuddering under him, orgasm taking her in waves.

Hades pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, a satisfied smile on his lips as tiny tremors racked through her, before moving up to capture her mouth. She could taste herself on him, his lips sticky and warm and she moaned into his mouth, pulling desperately at what remained of Hades’ clothes, and she wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted but she knew she wanted it now and not a minute later.

In a flurry of movement his clever wife had him bare-assed and sitting on the leather seat, one hand guiding him inside. Her sharp fingernails were digging into this shoulder when she slid down onto him, all slick and hot and _perfect,_ his hands bruising at her hips. She paused when she had him to the hilt, and their eyes locked. 

“I was trying to say,” She said, her voice barely above a murmur, all growl and want. “I want to ride you until you come inside me. What do you think, lover?”

A small teasing wiggle and she squeezed herself around him but didn’t move, and Gods bless him, he choked out his reply in that deep gravelly voice of his, a gasping rumble like a man just come up from drowning. 

“I think I’m yours, lover. However you want me.” 

A punishing kiss and an equally punishing pace. She rode him hard and fast, rhythmic slaps and her keening and whining filling the car, condensation fogging up the windows, the slide of skin on sweaty skin and sweaty skin on leather. Everything was sensation, everything was _need_ and _now_, and Persephone was clutching at any part of him she could get a hold of, while his hands holding on to her hips for dear life. It had been so long, too long, and like most things between them it didn't last.

“_Persephone._” Hades must have been well and truly lost in her because he so rarely used her name those days, and he so rarely made much noise when they had sex, but there he was shouting her name, and wasn’t that a fine thing indeed. He jerked up into her - one time, two, three, and then with a choking sob he pushed himself deep inside and she felt him twitching throbbing, spilling into her, filling her up hot and wet and _so_ _goddamn good_. 

Hades tilted his head back to rest on the seat back, wide grey eyes looking up at the pressed tin ceiling, gasping for breath, his softening cock starting to slip out of her, his release dripping down their legs. Persephone bit at the front of his exposed neck, sucking a mark just to the right of his adam’s apple. Trembling, basking in afterglow, Hades looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time, before drawing Persephone tightly to his chest, chin resting on her shoulder as his breathing finally began to slow.

Later that day they’d fight about the bottles of wine in her suitcase, his leaving her on her first day to go work at the factory, the mark she’d left where anyone could gawp at it; all of that was for later. In that moment, she was sure, they had captured a bit of that refuge, that happiness, that had been so easy to find in one another when they were younger. Things weren’t as bad as now when that train first came into the picture, but they were long on the dark path at that point, that much was clear now.

Thinking on it, Persephone was equal parts frustrated and sad. The end of the first week of October, and no sign of her husband, no sign of anything at all from the Underworld. Nothing to keep with her except memories of good times, or at the very least of _better_ times than now. Nothing in her bedroom with her but the empty, nothing but the quiet. 

In her lonely bed in her mother’s farm house, Persephone touched herself with practiced fingers. One hand dancing feather light over her breasts, her neck, her up to her mouth. The other worked into her underwear, rubbing, dipping inside, teasing herself. It was the early hours of the morning, and for weeks and weeks she couldn’t sleep a single untroubled stretch of sleep. Release didn’t take long, thinking on her husband. In her bliss she could almost smell autumn coming, could almost believe Hades was on his way, could almost believe he was still going to take her home.

When Persephone came it was with a desolate sob, and she cried herself to sleep. 

—————

The next day Demeter took one look at her, took her face in her hands, clucking her tongue in disapproval while looking over her red, puffy eyes. “I don’t much like him, you know that. I don’t much like him but I know he’ll come. He always does, whether I like it or not. He’ll come.”

Persephone wanted to believe her, but somewhere in that tired existence of hers she could hear the Fates, as if they were folded in a shadow, as if they were hidden in some penumbra or pocket of the universe, as if directly in her ear but also very far away; whispering to her that Hades found something new and pretty to play with, and he was never coming back for her.

There wasn’t much fight left in her, so when the stern and ever-watchful Demeter sent her daughter off to harvest pomegranates for their table, Persephone drifted off to the orchards with her baskets. If she could have felt anything but despair she’d probably have been pleased to go. She hadn’t seen pomegranates above ground in years, possibly hundreds of years. Hadn’t been around long enough to see any sort of Fall harvest come to fruit, for that matter.

Out in those orchards surrounded by the smell of ripening fruit, time swept her away. Persephone filled basket after basket for the nymphs to collect, hours just leaking away from her, not a care for the arc of the sun. The very last basket was her own to bring home. They were her favorite, once upon a time, this fruit that could grow even in the underworld.

At least, they used to grow in the underworld. She hadn’t seen them there either, hadn’t been able to grow a thing below ground in an age, not even asphodel. She wasn't strong enough these days, and how much of that was the drink's fault, anyway? Holding one now, looking at their beautiful shiny pinky-red flesh, she couldn’t help but feel horribly sad.

Fates, but she wanted a drink.

Instead of reaching for a bottle she plucked herself a pomegranate, cracking it in half under the shade of the tree and popping sharp, juicy arils into her mouth. They tasted like a good harvest, like a lot of hard work, and the juice stained her fingers the color of the coming sunset. Sweet, and bitter too.

At that moment, on account of whatever compulsion seems to drive these sorts of moments, Persephone chose to look up from the pomegranate in her hand just in time to see a figure far-off coming down the railroad tracks. After a moment of squinting she just about dropped that fruit in surprise, because she knew that gait coming at her better than she knew her own hands, her own fields.

It was Hades, it was _her husband_, coming out of the golden shadow of the sun like a mirage or a miracle. Wasn’t that something, a sight to see, that Hades King of the Underworld was _walking _down those railroad tracks towards her.


	6. Golden Hour

Sunrise and sunset were by far the most agreeable times of day. That hazy in-between time when eyes were still adjusting to the coming dark. The golden hour for painting, for looking over the hills or the water. For entertaining lovers, drinking ambrosia, sipping wine. A few hours of the day where the beauty of the world overshadowed the abject horror of it.

Hades didn’t spend much time above ground, but when business used to take him there he always aimed for those hours in particular. The sun wasn’t so harsh as it was just departing the pink embrace of Eos, nor was he sad to see it fold to Nyx’s domain. 

An age or more ago Hades had made one such trip, tying off his carriage in the mortal world just as dawn crept into view. Hades used the chariot to shorten the trip above ground, but rarely if ever travelled with it unless he was going for ‘noisy and more than a bit ostentatious”. 

There were occasions that called for such things but this visit to the over-world was not one of them. The path he was taking skirted the very edge of Demeter’s lands, which he avoided. The woman bore so little love for him already, it wouldn’t be good for anyone involved to further invoke her ire by trespassing without at least sending word to let her know he was dropping by. She was never inhospitable, but never more hospitable than she needed to be either. 

Hades had walked this route a hundred times before, but turning a corner he saw something new and wholly unexpected. A girl, shoulders golden from the sun, picking pomegranates in the shade, filling a whole host of baskets with the ripe fruits. She was wearing a simple white chiton and no shoes, with a healthy layer of dirt on her hands and feet. Long hair, a cascade of curls, loose and wild, heaped over her shoulder and reaching all the way down to the curve of her backside. Long lashes fluttering against rosy cheeks.

Was she some supplicant to Demeter? Some well-kept farmer’s daughter? Her hands were dirty, but they looked soft as the rest of her, supple. Not worn or knotted, but she was strong through the arms and legs. Deliciously curvy under the loose-fitting robes. The phrase ‘outdoor girl’ somehow came to mind and he wondered when he had taken to flights of fanciful poetic description.

Before Hades had even thought on it he was moving towards her. She had stopped to sit beneath the tree, cracking open one of the pomegranates to get at the juicy arils within. Their eyes by some magnet, it seemed, were drawn towards each other - she looked up at him then, caught his eyes. He hoped to look mysterious, beguiling, dark. When he opened his mouth to call out to her, the best he could come up with was — 

“Hello.” 

Hades wasn’t sure what he meant to accomplish in that moment, but the underwhelming one-word greeting probably wasn’t going to get him there. Like a startled doe she took one saucer-eyed look at him and dropped the halved fruit, disappearing over a hill without even taking her basket.

There was a moment, a crazed moment, where he envisaged this girl sitting beside him on a throne, walking through fields of asphodel, hand in hand, kissing him, warming his bed. A jeweled crown on her head. His queen. His equal.

The thought overtook him, and before long he was lost in its potential.

—————

Hades found every imaginable reason not to conclude his business on the surface that day. He was stuck on the idea of talking to that woman from the field, and when he was stuck on something he tended towards the very stubborn until he got it. He was like Zeus in that way, not that he’d admit to that, although unlike his brother it wasn’t typically women he got himself stuck on. He’d never been one for swooning or pining.

The next day around the same time he found his mystery beauty not far from the orchard in an open expanse of freshly tilled earth. Her brow was furrowed in concentration as little shoots poked their way through the ground, erupting into a tangled and glorious mess of colorful flowering vines. 

Not a regular mortal, then. A nymph? Her face was so expressive, her grin telling as she was obviously satisfied by her work. When she stood her hair was cupped in a halo of that beautiful golden hour light, and his heart tried its best to pound out of his chest.

“They’re beautiful,” Hades called out to her, leaning up against the shade tree he’d been hiding behind. “You have quite the gift.”

The woman started, but to her credit recovered quickly. She looked like she was considering running again, so Hades put up his hands as if to say ‘easy, take it easy’. Instead of running, her hands went to her hips and she raised an eyebrow disapprovingly. 

“You got quite the gift for intruding.” He wanted to kiss the crinkled up spot just between her brows. Trouble, trouble. Nothing but trouble here. “You shouldn’t be here.” 

“My apologies, am I bothering you?” 

“No, but you’re trespassing. This ain’t your land.”

Hades chuckles. She didn’t know who he was, then, which meant they were as of now on even footing. “Ah, trespassing, but I’m not bothering you? Isn’t your land either, in all fairness. Demeter has never minded my passing through before.” 

Demeter had, in fact, minded him passing through, because he “never had the decency to say hello.” If he was lying by omission, well, that was no one’s business but his own. The woman looked at him for a minute, and then laughed, a musical sound that plucked at his heartstrings in inexplicable ways.

“True enough, but I have permission to be here, whereas you… well.” There was regret in that, lurking under those words. Lonely. “Mama hates strangers, especially strange men, and I doubt she’d appreciate one stalking me through her fields and distracting me from my duties. Two days in a row, too, so you’re _really _askin’ for it.”

Demeter’s daughter. Her _only _daughter. Hades’ chest constricted, and he hoped his despair wasn’t written on his face. Not a nymph, or a mortal… a goddess. He should have known, with that much power so easily wielded on the flowering plants around them.

A goddess he should most definitely not be spending time with if he wanted to keep all of his limbs intact. Demeter was always very quick to anger, and she could be most unforgiving. If she knew that Hades had even entertained the idea of her daughter…. it wasn’t a thought he wanted to finish. 

A smart man would have left. Hades allowed himself this instance of stupidity.

Instead of taking his leave he moved, slowly, step by smooth step closer to the girl, until there was just a couple of meters of open field between them. “I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” he said, a small cheeky smile resting at the corners of his stern mouth.

She looked at him for one long moment, her face unreadable, hands still on her hips. An appraising look, sharp and sensible, but roguish too. He braced himself for a scolding, but instead this slip of a goddess grinned mischievously back at him.

“At the very least, we should know each other’s names.” She didn’t offer hers.

“Hades,” he said, returning the bow. “King of the Underworld, God of Death and Riches, et cetera et cetera. And yours?”

“Kore,” she said, mirroring him, head dipping low so that her hair dangled forward, catching the sun. “Daugher of Demeter, Goddess of Spring.”

—————

Hades returned every day of that week, and she never once brought up his trespassing again. He just sat himself in the shade and watched her work, not saying much, not wanting to disturb her. Kore would talk to him, though. About her work, the harvest, about this nymph or that. 

Sometimes she would toss him a piece of fruit, and when she was done working or taking a break she would always sit with him a while. They talked about a great deal, but by no coincidence they’d skirt the subject of Demeter, who would no doubt be furious with both of them if she knew they’d been spending time together.

After several days of meeting Kore at dawn, he was late one morning after being held up on business, only to find her waiting anxiously in the orchard with a basket underneath one arm. Her face bloomed into a smile when he came out from the tree line, a giddy blush touching the ripe apples of her cheeks.

“Didn’t think you’d come today, Hades! Figured you must be busy or somethin’.”

“I’ve got time,” he mumbled, which wasn’t exactly true but he was the lord of the underworld and he should be able to make time, dammit.

“Well, ain’t that just fine then. I made us up a picnic for two. Will you… do you wanna eat with me?” Kore smiled radiantly. He was hopeless, really, utterly enthralled. He smiled back at her with that crooked smile of his. 

“I will.”

In the golden hours of that evening Hades and Persephone basked in the sunset’s glow. In a bed of soft grasses, ensconced by trees and narcissus, it was Persephone who moved first to kiss him. A touch too hard and a touch too eager. Always went for what she wanted, his wife, even before she was his wife. In their private refuge, Hades asked her a question that was not a question. 

“Take pity on my poor heart, Kore. Take pity on a man. Let me take you home.”

The look in her eyes told him that she knew; knew who he was, knew what he was offering, and sknew that it wasn’t every day that a king took to bending his knee and bowing his head for someone, not unless it _meant _something. 

Red rinds cleaved clear in half, a host of pomegranate arils scattered all around, shining in the long grass, wild birds flying above them over the clearing; they took no notice of any sense or sound outside their own breathing. Hades took her slow and sweet, pleasuring her in the privacy of the retreat they’d carved out for themselves.

Hades never wanted to be anywhere but in her arms, not ever again.

—————

Demeter’s fields spread wider now than they did those days. They were fruitful this year, too, with the long Spring and Summer. Hades walked through endless tidy rows of pumpkins, zucchini, grapes, apples, and finally with the pomegranate orchards in view he suddenly felt nervous. 

The feeling was not so familiar to him, and not comfortable either. Hadn’t been nervous like this since they’d first met . Remembering her that first time he saw her, thinking on that incredible week, making love to her in the grass… she was his first, and he was hers. She was his last…

Would she be happy to see him? Like she was back then?

The walk took time, that’s why he did it. Hermes had just about fallen over with shock when Hades mentioned that he was leaving on foot. Eurydice raised an eyebrow but didn't have much to say except to tell him not to dally. This was a surprise, for his wife, but it was also to take precious time to reflect. They were so young when this started, she more than him. So happy. How did they go from that to…

Hades needed to find his way back there, back to those young lovers, and somehow he felt like this had to be part of it. The sun was bright, and he wore the sunglasses to shield his stinging eyes. No suit jacket, though. No tie. Just a white shirt and trousers and well-worn shoes. Just a small gift in his pocket.

When he saw her it sucked the air right out of his lungs.

By some mad coincidence she was seated under one of those pomegranate trees, ripping into a pomegranate and plucking out the seeds. Beautiful, he thought in awe, and just as he thought it she looked up as if she’d heard it.

Persephone didn’t move an inch, even as he approached her. She sat there, frozen, with a half rind in each hand, just looking. As he got closer he could see her eyes were puffy, her long fingers stained red with juice.Her eyes were puffy but focused, so much clearer than he’d seen them in some time. 

When he was just a few meters away he stopped, taking off his sunglasses and putting them in his pocket. Deep breath. Doing things right.

“They’re beautiful,” Hades voice rumbled like thunder through the orchard. Gesturing to the trees behind her, speaking over a backdrop of birds taking flight and leaves rustling in the cool wind, he continued. “You have quite a gift.”

Echoes. Impressions of what used to be. He hoped she remembered; right now she just looked at him like she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t disappear into the winds sweeping through the grove. Like he was a ghost.

“You’re late.” Her voice cracked. Persephone looked down at her dirty feet, the forgotten fruit still cupped in her hands. Hades kicked at the grass, looking down at his shoes like they were suddenly the most interesting things in the world. Coward.

“I know. Don’t I know. May I sit?” 

A silent nod. Hades rolled up his sleeves and took a seat in the dirt next to his wife. She handed him half a pomegranate, and he took it, and looking down it felt like he was seeing one for the first time. He squeezed it and some seeds poked out, some bursting under the pressure, and the bitter-sweet smell wafting up to his nose smelled like home. Like her. A comforting smell, and full of memories.

Neither of them moved for a long time. Just sat there in the dirt, in the shade of a tree, with several perfectly spaced inches of buffer between them, staring into their respective halves of fruit like they might hold answers. She broke the silence at last, and he let go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“You… walked?” 

“I did.” 

“Hermes…?”

“Cashing in on a few centuries of paid leave.”

A snort escaped her, and she covered her mouth in shock, as if the laugh were unexpected even to her. Shaking her head, she leaned in and touched her shoulder to his.  “You’ve never been late be-”

“I'm sorry,” Hades blurted out, cutting her off mid-sentence. Feeling desperate for closeness, leaned in to bury his nose in her hair. She smelled like flowers, fruit… and nothing else. He was in awe of this moment, of this person beside him. He didn’t want to break the spell of this sacred stretch of time. It had been _so long_ since they had been this quiet.“ Told you I’d try, lover. I couldn’t come until I had something to show for it. Something to-” 

“I’m happy to see you, Hades.” Persephone was nervous too. The thought occurred to him, and he didn't know quite what to do with that. Might be a good sign. She spoke so quiet, and he smiled, that small smile just for her, and tentatively reached for her free hand. When their fingers locked together he felt his eyes prick, almost tearing, as something unspoken passed between them.  
  
They looked into each other’s eyes and it felt new in some way. Persephone’s gaze was vulnerable. Fragile, in ways that she was never fragile. Like she might shatter. When she spoke again,he felt it soul-deep.

“I missed ya.” Cut him right down to the bone, to the quick, and if it weren’t for her hand squeezing his he might have thought it all a cruel dream.  



	7. Way Down

Hades came with her to Demeter’s farm house and waited while she packed her things.

They’d always met at the train station, and before that at the edge of Demeter’s land, so that Hades could avoid having to talk civil to her mama. Today he waited politely in the kitchen with Demeter. Brave, considering the frigid look in her ma’s eyes, telling him he’d best not to be so late next year, or ever again.

Mama offered him some tea. He declined, but not unkindly.

Hades looked a giant in their little house, head just about brushing the rafters, and he had to duck to avoid being hit square in the face with bundles of herbs they’d hung to dry. She came out of her bedroom wearing her green traveling dress and supple boots, with just one suitcase. Didn’t take long; she’d been half packed for a while, waiting on him.

He carried her suitcase in one hand, and kept a loose grip onto her hand with the other. No comments about her sobriety or her suitcases (or lack of suitcases, as it were). That was trying if she ever saw it. She’s be impressed if she weren’t so angry, so anxious.  Feeling nervous around a man you’d been wed to for millennia was strange enough; stranger still was the unreadable look on his face as they walked, staring down at the suitcase in his hand.

Walking that long tunnel, their footsteps echoed off the wall. Drumming. She thought about Orpheus. It was like being there, the way she could play it over in her head. The reverberations of his footsteps playing tricks on him, making him think that maybe, just maybe, it was just him and his own footsteps in that long, dark tunnel. The Fates behind, brandishing lanterns, feeding all the worst fears he had in his head, working those fears to a frenzy.

Eurydice, desperate and brave behind him, comforted by the long and lean shadow of the man she loved up ahead. Singing songs of comfort, willing him to be brave, to keep walking. Persephone could hear the heart-wrenching gasp, feel it in her gut, because with freedom just in sight Orpheus lost heart and turned to look upon his lover’s face.

There were no lanterns, not like in the old days, but the electric lights extinguished themselves as they passed them, the tunnel going dark behind them. They had the benefit of being mostly side by side, with her husband taking a bit of lead, and being hand in hand too.  Hard enough, making a marriage work, without adding all that extra doubt to the mix by putting one out of sight of the other. After a long time of nothing but their own heavy footsteps, of ghosts snapping at their heels, Persephone felt like she needed to speak, and so she did. 

“I saw Orpheus. Just last week, the boy stopped by.” 

The change in Hades’ face was immediate, even in the shadow, even with it set the way it was so no one saving her could see what he was thinking. Had she not been sober, well, she probably wouldn’t have been able to see it either.

Truth be told she’d probably have ignored it, or poked at it, making it worse. What right did the Kind of the Dead have to be so green with jealousy over some mortal boy? A muscle in his jaw that went taut as he grit his teeth. What right did have, when he was the one… 

Persephone choked that line of thinking right down, chewing the inside of her cheek. Instead of opening her mouth to fight, she squeezed her husband’s hand.

“Just passing through. Didn’t stay long. Surprised to see me, but I think he needed a familiar face.” There was another stretch of silence, and her husband didn’t seem at all settled by what she’d said. Never saw an emotional wound she didn’t want to pick to bleeding, to scarring, so she continued. “How is Eurydice?”

Must not have been the neutral tone she'd be going for, because Hades looked at her then with a strange expression on his face, as something unspoken passed between them. A mutual understanding of having been rubbed raw by a feeling over centuries, and he squeezed her hand back. “The little song bird has been running your bar in your absence.”

He knew… of course, he knew. _‘Show them the crack and they’ll tear down the wall,’_ he’d said. Not prone to poetry, her husband. Not prone to flowery words, except when — 

But his tone was one of simple explanation. No malice underneath, no resentment. Just a statement. Persephone took a deep breath of humid air, blew it back out. Tried not to dwell on him being still aware of the song bird’s comings and goings. Unusual, for her husband to know a single thing about any shade that wasn’t necessary. 

Were they still…?

“I… made some changes. Structural changes. To Hadestown. Also Included were changes to the girl’s contact. We can review the revised clauses to your satisfaction, if you’re so inclined, when we—“ 

“Stop. Hades.” He was speaking so formal-like, like theirs was an attorney-client relationship instead of a marriage, and she couldn’t bear it. Talking about _the undersigned _ and _shall _clauses, all curt and professional and _hard._The anger bubbling in her was hardly any duller for the lack of drink in her system, but she bore it as best she could. Compromise left a bitter taste on her tongue. “I’m not uninterested, husband, I just don’t need you to talkin’ to me like a mortal accepting a deal… please.” 

Maybe she could have been a bit sweeter, and maybe the please was an afterthought, but it took a bit of the bite out of it. Persephone was always rough when she needed to be smooth, sour when she needed saccharine. Hades was struggling to find words, his clumsy cotton-mouth choking on what words he did find, and he was frustrated but his hand remained firmly in hers. Progress.

“I’m… I don’t know how to…” Persephone heard swallow, a gulping sound deep in his old throat. When he continued, it was barely audible, like low rumble of a far off storm. “I’m trying.” 

“I know. Don’t I know.” 

The rest of the journey passed in silence. 

—————

Persephone looked down at her open suitcase.

The suitcase didn’t have much in it. A few outfits, a journal, a small keepsake or two that she always carried. Without all of the usual trappings of Summer she didn’t have much to her name that she needed to bring. Had a whole closet full of clothes in the Underworld, and a closet in her mother’s house, too.

Their luxurious sheets had been freshly laundered. They had this crisp smell, soapy but not perfumed, which she could smell even just sitting on the edge of the bed. Some shade or another would have cleaned the sheets for her, seeing as her husband was a god-awful housekeeper, and even worse at laundering. 

There were flowers in a vase on her side of the bed, which was new, a bit lovely. Asphodel and narcissus. Familiar, but different. Being gone so long she’d started to ache for this place, miss it, as much as she hated it these days. This place, and her husband too.. But now that she was here something was picking at the edge of her consciousness. 

Something felt wrong, and she couldn’t place it, like a tune lost to time.

Alone in their bedroom that horrible old feeling was creeping up on her. Hades had left her so she could “get settled,” but he’d been gone over two hours. Was he working? Would he even be back? Persephone shivered. Their bedroom was cold, and she wanted a drink.

Then it hit her like a runaway freight car. Their bedroom was cold.

Rushing to the window seat she looked down, all the way down where Hadestown should be, and saw… nothing. Not a lit window or a flashing neon sign, no steady beat of picks or hammers. No workers working, no movement. No burning foundry, no factory buckling and bellowing. Nothing.

It was quiet, it was dark, and Persephone was cold.

Looking up she saw the glittering of cavernous walls, peppered with jewels and cut through by thick roping veins of silver, obscured in part by mist but still visible. Used to be the light pollution fogged out the view up there above them, electricity sucking up the Underworld “sky” she used to love in her own way. In the low light she could barely see the wall, a hideous obelisk in the distance beyond the Styx.

The cascading spiral of her frantic thoughts drowned out everything else. Persephone didn’t even hear the knock on the door until it came a second time, startling her out of her own head. She turned from her place at the window to stare at the closed door.  
  
“Come in,” she croaked, nervous fingers itching for a bottle, for a flask, picking at the frayed hem of her summer dress.

The door swung open to reveal her husband, still wearing that loose white shirt, open two buttons at the collar, sleeves rolled up to reveal the bottom of the bricked tattoo that crawled up his arm. White hair shining bright like a crown in their bedroom light. He runs his fingers through it when he’s stressed, and he _must_ be stressed, because it’s all ruffled up on one side.

Hades had a tray in his hand. 

“I apologize, there was just… some business. I’m here now.” He stood awkwardly in the door, still holding the tea tray like he wasn’t sure what to do next, and she felt like she was looking at an entirely new person in her door, in their bedroom. 

“I brought you tea,” He continued, interrupting her thoughts with that low rumble of his, almost subterranean.. “Hibiscus… You don’t have to have it, but I thought you’d want… that you’d like…some.”

How was it that after all these years they were stilling treading new ground?

When they first kissed it was Persephone who made the move to do so. It was Persephone who gave the okay for Hades to lay her down in that field. It was Persephone who bowed the head of a king. Always been willing to let her take the reigns, but still, her husband never seemed unsure like this. This was something new, and she didn’t have a clue what to do with it.

“I would love some tea.” 

Two cups. Hades placed the tray gently next to her on his bedside table and poured two cups. He stirred three perfectly level spoonfuls of sugar and a tiny pour of cream into one and held it out to her. She busy staring at the other one like she couldn’t quite work out the function of a second cup for a husband who never stopped long enough to have a cup of tea with his wife.

Pressing the cup into her hands, he took up that second cup without adding anything to it and perched himself next to her on the window seat.

“Hades…?” She spoke into the tea cup, rather than to him.

“Lover?” 

“I’m cold.”

The silence that followed was alive, all that lay between them writhing like a pit of snakes. A monstrous idea had begun to seep through the cracks of her, filling her up, leaking out of her. The Fates were in a frenzied state, whipping up panic in the back of her mind, and she closed her eyes to will them to shut up long enough that she could wrap her brain around a single coherent thought.

Not a word from Hades, who just stared that intense stare back at her, brows drawn together, squinting a bit. Something turned in her stomach. She felt like she might sick up when finally a clear thought rose to the surface, from the aether, and when she thought it, like so many thoughts she’d had of late, Persephone wished she could un-think it. 

What had her husband had done to all those poor souls who were supposed to be out there in Hadestown?

“I’m cold… and it’s dark.” In her head Persephone heard Eurydice’s desolate sobbing as the Underworld sucked her back up. She heard her husband singing pretty songs to a young girl with nothing to eat. Looking right through him she was inundated by the chaotic din of her thoughts and suddenly she was overwhelmed with wondering what horrific thing Hades had seen fit to do in her absence. 

Everything was bleeding together, a sickly riot of color and sound and sensation, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but panic, hysteria, confusion, hurt, could hardly speak except to say—“It’s quiet, Hades. It’s quiet. It’s quiet. I can’t hear any n-noise coming from the town. Where are the souls, Hades? What d-did you… Hades, _what did you do?_”

Hades had the look of a man who’d set something into motion without quite understanding the how or why of it, or the consequences. So calm and careful were his next words, she almost couldn’t believe they were coming from the monster wearing her husband’s face. “I was trying to tell ya, lover. I did some restructuring. While you were gone, I met with Eurydice and—” 

_“I don’t need the details of what you’ve been doin’ to Eurydice,_” Persephone growled through gritted teeth, raw with rage, shaking where she sat. “I asked you a question, Hades, now a_nswer me_.” 

“Wait a minute, lover, I —“

“ANSWER ME!” Persephone stood up, her knee knocking over the tea cup. It smashed on the floor, a cascade of shiny, wet ceramic at her feet.

“PERSEPHONE.”

Hades was on his feet, too, and she was so shocked by his raising his voice at her that she flinched. Her heart hammering away in her chest. The thought, unbidden and intrusive, _when was the last time he had even said her name out loud before now?_ This sure wasn’t how she wanted to hear it.

“Listen. Please.” Hades wrung his hands white, his voice gentler, but tense. He stared down at the floor with a grimace on his face. “You have misunderstood me. Twice, for that matter. I just need ya to listen for a second. Then you can decide if you still want to go off at me, if you’re still—“ 

Hades gestured vaguely at her. She sat back down on the window seat, teeth still clenched, and gestured for him to proceed.

“I’m not speaking in euphemisms. I didn’t do anything to the shades except try to fix what wrong I’d done to them to begin with. It’s cold because the foundry’s shut. It’s quiet because it’s night time. Made it so they’ve got day and night down there, to feel more like when they were livin’. Not done yet, haven’t got it all figured out, but it’s a start. I just wanted the plan to be well in truly in motion before… before you came back. That’s why I was late, lover. It pained me to be so, but I needed to show you this old man could still try, do things right and proper.”

Persephone could hear the words, understood them individually, but couldn’t string the meaning together. She looked at him, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, ceramic shards dripping with red scattered at her feet, and was about to interrupt when he held up a finger to silence her. 

“As for the girl,” Hades sighed deeply, sinking down onto the bed, their knees almost but not quite touching. He rested his head in his hands, spoke to the floor instead of her. “Eurydice. I never touched her. I did… I did consider it. She was lookin’ up at me, expectin’ it. There was a moment I thought I could be that kinda mean, that kinda man.” 

Hades looked up at her, looked right into her eyes, and she could see him, every bit the man she married under that furrowed brow. “She wasn’t you. Couldn’t bring that desperate girl into my bed, into _our_ bed. Ain’t never had anyone but you in my bed, I need you to know that. My only sins were bringing the girl down here in the first place, and tryin’ to make you think I’d bedded someone else” 

Persephone never felt so brittle in her bones as she did now, looking at this man of hers and thinking of all the monstrous things she’d imagined him to be capable of. She’d gone on resenting him so long, leaning into that hate, that she didn’t stop to consider who he was underneath. Always making assumptions instead of just opening her mouth. 

Always opening her mouth to say all the wrong things.

After a long while, Persephone bridged the gap between as a peace offering, touching her knee to his. He started. They looked at each other. wife to husband, husband to wife, trembling and tremulous, eyes framed with unshed tears. They were both exhausted from the years of making up new ways to be hateful to one another. She broke the silence.

“Hades I’m — I’m sorry. Lover, I’m so sorry.” The word still tasted bitter in her mouth, but it needed to be said. For such a grave misunderstanding, it sure as hell needed to be said. For all the times they never apologized to one another for anything, no matter how small, it needed to be said. “We’re fools, we two. Ain’t we just. The perfect match.” 

Hades let out a huff of a laugh, and tears were spilling hot down her cheeks, and she reached out with both hands towards him, half expecting him to slap them away, only for him to grasp her hands in his until it just about hurt her. “I’m sorry too. I’m sorry I let it get like this. I just want to give you what you want, what will make you happy. Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to come to bed with me.” The idea got into her head and came straight out of her mouth. Persephone had said it before she could even consider if she should. Hades’ face told her that he was just as startled as she was. Underneath, he looked suspicious. So many years of walking this minefield, they didn’t know ow to just ask for things, or give things in turn.

“Come to bed with me, Lover. There’s a lotta work to do, and a lot that needs sayin’. I can’t promise I won’t screw up. I’m sure you’ll screw up, too. Gods know we’re good at that. But we can’t fix this marriage in a night. Share my bed, _our _bed, and tomorrow morning we can suss out where to go next.”

Hades hesitated, glancing out the window. A thorn worked it’s way into her heart, tearing holes in her thin resolve. Work. He was thinking about work, whatever papers lay waiting on his desk, stupid, so stupid to think he would even —

“Okay.” Hades kissed her hand, and she is relieved. The tension eased in her shoulders, and she kissed the back of his hand right back.

“Okay.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the heftiness of this chapter - I couldn't bear to break it up!  
Planting some seeds here. Enjoy! 
> 
> A quick note, although I'm hoping it's self-explanatory - shades are dead. They can't die, not really. But they can be scrubbed out of existence, or sent to Lethe to forget their old lives, or any number of other things. I imagine Persephone's panic comes from thinking that all those innocent souls had been scrubbed, lost their chance at a new life or a satisfying afterlife. 
> 
> Being that Hades (and by extension her) made a vow to be a caretaker to all of these souls, I'd think this was a worst-case scenario. Hurting the shades is bad, what he was doing already was horrible, but if he'd done what she thought he did it would probably have been irredeemable.


	8. Catharsis

In lower Hadestown there were hundreds of rows of little mining houses springing to life as the shades began to filter out their doors and getting on their way to work for the day. A quiet bustle, not labored or hurried, following strings of illuminating lights on their way to mines and businesses.

In the sprawling house above Hadestown, in a marriage bed as old as time, old as dirt, Hades and Persephone made slow, exploratory love, touching each other like they were something new, something different then they used to be.

It had started with the two, husband and wife, intertwined in their nightclothes and fast asleep. Persephone backed right up against Hades, every part of them touching from head to toe, his arms wrapped around her, his face buried into the crook of her neck.

Having been used to rising with the sun all summer long, Persephone stirred awake as the lamps were lit in the town below and the light filtered in through their now unshaded windows. Hades breathing was shallow and slow as he slept still, holding onto her as if she might slip away at any moment.

She lay there, motionless, afraid to break the spell that held them together, peaceful in bed like they hadn’t been in an age. She was so warm, wrapped up in her man’s arms and a heap of blankets. It made her heart ache, and she found herself wishing she could get closer to him, crawl up inside him and take residence there and just _be._

The smell of him, a heady smell like fire, like fresh-tilled blackest black earth. Hades mumbled in his sleep, breathing hot again her neck, and now it wasn’t just her heart aching for the closeness of her husband. She squeezed her legs together, feeling pleasure and heat begin to pool between them, her heart thumping like a drum beat of footsteps in the halls of her heart.

Reaching back behind her she rested a hand on her husband’s hip, and slowly rolled her own hips, her plump rear grinding up against her husband, whose cock began to stir even while he slept. Hades groaned softly but didn’t wake, and she rolled her hips again with a soft moan of her own, clenching and unclenching her thighs. He pressed a gentle, open-mouthed kiss to the hollow where her neck met her shoulder. 

“Lover…” His voice was heavy with sleep, all subterranean gravel and damn, didn’t that make her want to move this right along, rutting and mounting him until they were both lost, but that wasn’t what he needed right now. They’d never been bad at that. Taking release as they could had never been a problem between them. It was the slow and loving they’d forgotten how to do.

So Persephone shifted in his arms to face him, pushing herself up on the pillows so that they were eye to eye, noses almost touching, breath mingling between them. Hades must have been tending more towards awake than not now, because his breath hitched and he was fully hard pressed up against her hipbone and he was looking at her like she was a dream.

“Hades…” She sighed breathlessly, a small prayer to the god of death. She began to set a languid rhythm, rolling her pelvis in slow time against him, and she could feel his cock twitch where it was trapped between them and saw her husband’s eyelashes flutter with pleasure and damn, wasn’t this something? She almost forgot what this was like, making real honest-to-gods love to her husband. Nothing between them but the moment they were living in. 

Hades’ hands began to wander, touching her like porcelain or some other fragile thing. He trailed a gentle thumb down her cheek, skimmed her neck, traced a path along her collar bone, before finally moving down to brush her nipples through the silky fabric of her nightdress. She moaned softly, her nipple stiffened beneath his thumb, and encouraged he cupped her breast in his hot hand before once again flicking his thumb over the tip.

They continued like this for some time, until she almost couldn’t take the sweetness of it and tugged his nightshirt over his head, hands exploring his chest, tracing each and every scar on his torso. Before long there were no clothes between them, and Hades rolled her onto her back, planting promises in the form of kisses down the front of her body, a glow of perspiration clinging to every dip and curve. He was always a brilliant lover, a generous lover, and she breathed his name when he spread her open and his warm tongue began to taste and tease.

_“_Oh, Hades_,”_ she said, and he groaned that deep guttural groan again, licking and suckling, dipping his tongue inside, fucking her with his mouth until her orgasm snuck up on her and she shuddered, threw her head back, and said her husband’s name again. “_Hades!”_

A generous lover indeed, so much so that if she didn’t coax him back up he’d have stayed there for ages, for hours, laving her clit, teasing her with practiced fingers, ruining her. She captured his mouth in a searing kiss, tasting her arousal on his tongue. 

Patience slipped away from her, replaced by an intense need to have her husband inside. She reached into the sticky, hot space between them to line up his cock, hard as a steel rod. They paused like that with just the head of him inside of her, breathing deeply in time and looking straight into one another’s eyes. 

“I missed ya,” Persephone whispered, a sparkle in her eye. Hades made a small sound like a hurt child, almost imperceptible it was so quiet, and it just about broke her heart. She caressed his cheek and he leaned into it, touch-starved and wanting was her husband, and that broke her heart too. That was on her; casual affectionate touch had not been in her repertoire as of late.

“I missed ya too, lover,” Hades replied, voice trembling, and she forgot what it was like to have this kind of power. The King of the Underworld crouched between her legs, looking at her like she was the whole world. Like she might disappear if he looks away.

In one fluid motion Hades pushed himself all the way up inside of her, and the shaking could have been him, but it was probably just as much her. Rocking into her, slow-as-you-please, he opened her wide, their foreheads pressed together, gasping and moaning together.

Persephone came a second time, clenching around him, slick thighs rubbing against sweat-wet hips, but he didn’t stop pushing into her in that steady pace, smooth and regular as the beat of a working engine. She sucked a mark into his neck, and he growled, and then something broke in his resolve and he was slapping into her, wild, his pace gone frantic and irregular, all the careful control leaking out of him. Persephone took his face in her hands, looking right into those big grey eyes of his.

“Come home, lover. Bring yourself home with me.” 

“I — I —“ With a gasp Hades shuddered, pushing deep inside of her, his cock pulsing and twitching and filling her until finally he stopped, still shaking, holding on to her with his forehead pressed to hers like she might slip away at any moment.

Their skin stuck together. Her husband was shaking in her arms, trembling like a leaf, mouthing some soft words of love low and rough into the delicate blushing skin of her neck. Messy, just like their lives had become, but utterly perfect too. They stayed that way, his weight on her, him soft and still pressed inside, and she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten how good it could be, the two of them together.

Stroking the expanse between Hades’ shoulder blades, Persephone let herself just be for while. She was surprised to find that her husband, her husband who couldn’t sit still for more than a minute without finding something to do, had drifted off to sleep again in her arms. 

—————

When Hades finally left for the factory it was late morning. Persephone did his tie for him, smoothed his fancy little pocket square, and Hades pressed a delicate kiss to her temple.She didn’t like the pinstripes, but she could suffer them for a chance at fixing things. For the chance of not suffering anything worse than a much maligned suit.

They planned to dine together that evening. Six o’clock sharp, they were gonna meet. While Hades worked she decided to wander the worker’s part of town. It didn’t look all that much different. Made to look like a mining town, something to comfort the freshly dead, to make the changes less jarring. But it was the feel of it, the way the air sat in the town - there was something there, something changed.

Maybe it was that there were shades in the homes now, even during the work day. Maybe it was that the air of neglect no longer clung to each of the crumbling buildings. Whatever it was, Persephone was awestruck, and before long her feet had carried her directly to the doorstep of her old speakeasy. 

There was a sign out front. 

This was a surprise, obviously, since it was the secret of the thing that made it a speakeasy. Still, it was a rustic sign, beautifully made, and simply said “Persephone’s”. While her husband could make a chair, or a furnace, or jewelry even, lettering wasn’t exactly in his purview. She was genuinely impressed by whoever did it. 

Walking through the door set off a cacophony of excited hollering as shades she recognized gathered around her, welcoming her home. They had never really seemed to remember her before, were always drawn to her sunshine and her liquor but not really seeing her face, but they sure knew who she was now. 

Hades never did things by half.

The crowd and noise slowed around Persephone as her eyes wandered back to behind the bar where Eurydice, beautiful sad Eurydice, slung a bar rag over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow. Looking her right in the eye. It was all that she could not to cry to look at her, but for her part the girl gave her a small smile and Persephone cut through the throng of shades to reach her. 

“Welcome back,” Eurydice said, picking a glass from beneath the bar and flipping it with a practiced hand. Impressive. Persephone shocked them both by putting a hand over the glass before the girl could fill it high with dandelion wine. 

“Just juice, thanks. If we’ve got it.” Persephone looked at the girl pointedly, hoping she’d get the picture. Eurydice blew out a breath with a small choked laugh. 

“Well, okay. Okay.” 

They passed the whole of the afternoon talking. Eurydice served while they talked, and it was the closest she’d been to a drink since last Winter, but the girl made it so easy not to think about that. They talked about the harvest, the long spring, the slow creeping of fall coming on just as it was supposed to be. Their favorite fruits, their favorite smells.

Persephone wished with all she had in her that she could have made it right for this girl and her man, but at the very least she was making it right for others coming after.Eurydice seemed pleased — no doubt she was imagining Orpheus in the summer sun, with food a’ plenty and a warm, safe place to lay his head.

Eurydice asked about Orpheus. It wasn’t surprising, the girl was strong in all the ways that Orpheus was not; she could face the wind when it was blowing. Could bear the bitter cold. Eurydice had found a fragile peace, resigned to her fate but not without hope, and Persephone was glad for it.

Eurydice listened intently but never once asked the impossible, never asked to see him or for another chance. The telling was a bit of catharsis, a favor she could grant that eased her own troubled heart. When Persephone left it was with a promise, the best she could do for the girl who’d gotten caught in the crossfire of her broken marriage.

“You write him, y’hear? If you write him, I’ll make sure your letters make it topside. I promise you that much.”

Eurydice smiled through unshed tears, watery eyes looking down at the bar, and Persephone ducked under and around to take the girl in her in her arms, held her close. The girl clung back, as touch-starved as Persephone’s husband, and so she kissed her gently on the top of the head. 

They stayed like that for a very long time, saying nothing, letting all the hurt flow out.


	9. The Fates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A heartfelt thank you for anyone who comes back to this after so long. It's my pleasure to write for you again.

The Fates weren’t so much foe as they just _were._

Always there, always echoing the very worst of your thoughts back into your ear, finding those little raw and red pockets in your resolve and sticking their clever, probing fingers into them.

The fates weren’t foe, but they certainly weren’t friend either. Some say they had a particular vendetta against men, but in truth the only target they favored was the susceptible kind. Hades had spent so long listening to those hateful whispers in the darkest pits of his despair, he hardly knew his own thoughts without the backdrop of their whispered words.

Sitting in his office, Hades found himself unable to focus on his contracts and his paperwork. There was a dint in his desk from when his wife had overturned it. While he worried the indent with his thumb, he thought about making love to his wife that morning, wordless hopes passed from mouth to mouth. There was so much potential in their joining that sitting at his desk seemed more like inertia than progress when he could be with his wife, where he wanted to be.

The Fates were strangely absent. It was so easy to think that perhaps they had finally given up, but they never let something go once they got to grasping for it.Were they with Persephone, dripping poison into his wife’s waiting ear while he sat as his desk? Tempting her with discord and drink? Would they return later to wreak havoc on their fragile, tenuous efforts at reconciliation? 

When Hades put his wife on a train to the above ground last Spring, it was with Orpheus’ song in his heart and in his head. Drowning out the Fates’ chorus with the tune. The boy’s song was bright like the carnation tucked behind Persephone’s ear, determined like the kiss he pressed to her soft, pink mouth.

But it wasn’t long into the project of fixing his mistakes that the boy’s song began fading to the background. The weight of his worries creased his forehead, crooked his neck. Hades was tired in his bones, in his sinew, in the very core of himself. It was late one evening as he had begun to doze off at his desk that the silence of his office was cleaved by crooning voices, in the back of the room, in the back of his mind.

_Do you really think this will bring your wife back to your bed?_

Lachesis shook her bells like cruel laughter in the dark. Klotho and Atropos pressed in close to their sister, their sharp, sneering faces crowding into each other in his mind’s eye, blurring together. Their beaded skirts clicked a sound like beetle’s jaws, but he didn’t reach for their voices. Instead, Hades walked over to the bar cart he kept in the corner of the room and from a crystal decanter poured himself several fingers of whiskey. 

_Why should you give up all you’ve worked so hard to build?_

He tossed back the whole glass like it was bottom-shelf swill, relishing in the smooth burn of it, honing in on the feel of it sliding down his throat. Hades sighed heavily and poured himself another, tossing it back to the hum of amused laughter.

_What’s left to give your darling, ungrateful wife when all of this is gone away?_

“ENOUGH,” Hades bellowed, hurling the glass at the now empty corner of the room. 

The fiddle had moaned a discordant tangle of notes, a mess of incongruent screaming chords.

That hateful pressed-in piece of wood brought him out of his head, out of memory, and reminded him that there was work to be done. If the Fates were gone, he wouldn’t tempt them to return by dwelling on the past. With any luck Persephone would be at her old speakeasy right now, where she could see he was trying to put things to rights. With any luck, the Fates would leave them be.

Maybe she’d even talk to the song bird, and see he was as good as his word. 

—————

The shadows grew long from Hades’ office window. The benefit of having a night and a day was that it was harder to lose track of time, but when he finally thought to glance at the clock it was far later than he’d intended to leave the factory. 

Already five fifteen, not leaving much time to get cleaned up and changed for his dinner date. 

Had he known that he’d spend over twenty precious minutes standing in his closet trying to decide what to wear, he might have set an alarm to leave the factory early. How could he have anticipated that the daunting task of preparing for this date would reduce him to little better than a blushing teenager, all frayed nerves and fumbling and insecurity.

Hades heaved a frustrated sigh, standing with his hands on his hips, his pinstripe suit half undone, and he rested his forehead against the door jamb with a gentle thud. Two more thuds for good measure. 

_Think, think._

Persephone hated the suit he was wearing and he knew it, so it and the many identical ones in his closet wouldn’t do. It was the pinstripes, he thought, or maybe it was that it was grey on grey, cold as the wall. Always too severe, too dark, too grim next to the goddess of Spring. 

Looking down the line of shirts to the end he saw his best bet; a suit jacket and pants in warm charcoal, a deep blue vest. Add a tie and a pocket square to match. Brought out the color in his eyes, she’d said once, or so he seemed to remember.Hades threw it on in record time, before moving his process to the bathroom to do up his tie, wash his face, and fix his hair. 

The eyes looking back at him from the mirror were mostly grey, flecked with blue, murky as a river, and tired. Hades departed for the dining hall, where the shades had prepared a table for them.

Some time later the candle wax dripped slowly down the taper candles on the table, dribbling onto the metal of the holder and going white, hardened by the cool of the air. There was no light from Hadestown, the dull glow of the night lamps too weak to reach the hall where Hades sat waiting for his wife. 

Before long it was seven o’clock.

Persephone was an hour late and from somewhere inside the dark corners of his heart came the familiar jingle of bells as the Fates once again made themselves known. There were no footsteps, no rustling of beaded finery, but he could feel feet dragging in the cavity of his chest, feel the primordial shiver of air being displaced as they came into being.

The three of them smiled shark-wide grins, gaping maws with too many teeth and glistening in the candlelight, seated at the opposite end of their long banquet table There was no movement, no sound, until then again — the mocking bells. The eerie pull of violin strings. A piercing laugh from another room.

_Where is your wife, Aïdōneús? _

One of them spoke, or maybe all of them, without opening their mouths. The sound came from in front him, from just next to him, from across the hall. He recognized what this was, a ploy, deliberately jarring, to set him off balance.

_Why are you here all on your own?_

The table seemed altogether shorter, accordion-bent and distorted by their presence, until they were seated just to the front of him, their ancient eyes distressingly gleeful. 

_You put in such an effort, Hades. Yet here you are, with nothing to show for your trouble but candle wax on your tablecloth and an empty seat where your wife should be._

“I did not ask for your council,” Hades growled, pouring himself a goblet of strong, red wine and drinking deeply. “I have no need of it.”

_Did you really think it could be so easy?_

_That you would toil away in barren soil and somehow be rewarded?_

“Bite your tongue, you are speaking to a _King.” _Hades voice scraped into the silence like a pick on stone, echoed off the walls. The giggle that followed was eerily childlike. He took another gulp of wine, a carnation-red droplet of wine making its way down the side of the goblet, blooming on the white of the crisp, starch tablecloth.

_A king of dirt and of death. You cannot change who and what you are. _

Staring at the slow spread of wine pooling on the table, an old and irrational anger seeped in his chest cavity, rising up to his throat and leaving an acrid aftertaste.

_How could you hope to bring pleasure to the Goddess of Spring with nothing on offer but the barren soil of your endless mines?_

The goblet was empty. The pitcher too. His pocket watch ticked and ticked.

_You will never please her because she does not care to let you. She does not even try._

A trace of wine dribbled into the crease of Hades’ mouth, rolling down his chin.

_You stink of death, Hades. You reek of it. Did you let yourself think she missed you, up there in the sunshine?_

“Silence, foul fates,” Hades moaned, cradling his head in his shaking hands.

_No doubt as you sit here she has surrounded herself with your shades, laughing at your feeble attempts to capture her affections. Laughing with your charge, Eurydice, who you were not even man enough to take to your bed. _

There were tears in Hades’ eyes. “_No.” _

_You are alone, made a fool of again by your own wife._

“BE GONE,” Hades shouted into the dim, and with a long, piercing note the Fates were gone, their damage done. With a roaring yell Hades overturned his wife’s empty chair, shattering one intricately carved wooden leg into pieces on the stone floor, and storming off to the tune of erratic, beating drums. 


End file.
